1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a kit that contains the necessary components, wear parts and subassemblies necessary to refurbish a transmission. Specifically, the kit includes the parts necessary to refurbish a specific transmission or a transmission from a family of transmissions having similar design.
2. Description of Related Art
Transmissions are an essential component of any vehicle. They transmit the force generated by the engine to the vehicle's wheels. Transmissions are comprised of hundreds, if not thousands, of components, including certain components that are purposely designed to wear down. With use and under extreme conditions, these wear components become less effective and ultimately fail. For example, a gasket can fail and allow transmission fluid to leak out of the casing that houses the transmission. Once a transmission failure occurs, the vehicle's owner will typically take the vehicle in for repair. If the problem is minor, the transmission will be repaired. If the problem is significant, then the transmission will be replaced. For the vehicle's manufacturer, the warranty cost associated with replacing a transmission is very high. Therefore, the manufacturer has a need to increase the ease with which a complicated transmission can be refurbished, even when it has suffered a significant failure.
All modern transmissions are extremely complicated mechanical devices. Therefore, it is not uncommon for a transmission repair to take over ten hours to complete, even if a skilled technician is performing the repair. Thus, the cost of labor for the repair is very high. Moreover, due to the large number of variations to transmissions, it is uncommon for a skilled technician to be familiar with even a small subset of existing transmissions. Therefore, the likelihood that the transmission will be fixed properly is relatively low. Indeed, it is common for 25% to 30% of all repair jobs to be flawed. Therefore a need exists for a system that will decrease the labor cost of a transmission repair while at the same time increasing the quality of the repair.
Over the life of a transmission design, it might be installed in several million vehicles. During that cycle, improvements might be implemented to address ongoing failure modes. For example, if a particular component has a tendency to crack, later versions of the same transmission might be equipped with the same component implemented in a different material. This improves the reliability and the safety of the transmission. Therefore, a need exists to enable the technician to replace the faulty components of a transmission even if he has no knowledge of the fault.
It is also difficult for an average vehicle repair shop to maintain an adequate inventory of parts for the large number of transmission designs in service. If the repair facility does not have the specific component(s) in inventory, the time and cost of the repair simply increases. Therefore, a need exists for a more efficient method of making specific components available to a repair shop.
Finally, all transmissions include a variety of subassemblies. These subassemblies are assembled to very specific tolerances. But when the subassembly has to be disassembled for a repair, it is rare that the same tolerances can be achieved upon reassembly. Thus, a need exists for a method of refurbishing a transmission that results in the same factory level tolerances to be achieved.